Titanoboa - World's Largest Prehistoric Snake

Titanoboa, is an extinct genus of snake that lived approximately 60–58 million years ago. The only known species is Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the largest, longest, and heaviest snake ever discovered.
    In 2009, researchers discovered fossilized vertebrae and ribs from 28 individual snakes in an open-pit coal mine at Cerrejon, northeastern Colombia. The scientists estimated that the snake lived 58 to 60 million years ago and was 12.8 meters long (42 feet), weighing 1,135 kilograms - making it the largest and biggest known snake in the world. Study on this discovered vertebrae's structure suggested that the snake was closely related to the boa constrictor, because of which the team named the species as - Titanoboa cerrejonensis, or 'titanic boa from Cerrejon'.
     The modern pythons and anacondas, which are thought to be the largest living snakes generally do not exceed 6-6.5 meters, which means the Titanoboa was almost twice as long as the largest snake alive today. According to Harry Greene, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University in New York, Titanoboa is really spectacular and is the largest snake ever confirmed.
    Studies suggest that Titanoboa looked like a boa constrictor, but hunted like a crocodile. Before this discovery of Titanoboa, Gigantophis was thought to be the biggest prehistoric snake, measuring 33 foot long and weighing thousand pounds. Gigantophis lived approximately 40 million years ago in the southern Sahara region, where Egypt and Algeria are currently situated.